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sues. I was concerned about going at this time
of year, however, so we abandoned that plan.
Our third and final plan came courtesy of a
Southwest Airlines sales email, which advertised
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$49 one-way non-stop flights to select cities.
From San Diego, these included mostly North-
ern California, Nevada, and Arizona destina-
tions. We considered the Bay Area, but one of
our last trips was to Napa. I was interested in
going to Sacramento, to see the California State
Railroad Museum, as well as destinations relat-
ed to the gold rush. My wife was more interested
in going to South Lake Tahoe, and I thought that
would be OK as well. When I compared flight
prices, however, I found you could fly about
once an hour all day to Sacramento for $49 with
this sale, but the lowest price to fly to Reno/
Tahoe was $112 one way, with that price good
only a couple of flights per day. I’d already com-
pared days and found the lowest costs and
greatest availability were for flying mid-week, so
I was targeting flying out on a Wednesday and
returning on the following Tuesday.
Frustrated with the large price difference be-
tween going to Sacramento and Reno, I looked
at the map of where Southwest flies in order to
get other ideas and noticed that the distance be-
tween the two cities was not that great. With on-
ly a 2.5 hour drive to get from Sacramento to
Reno, it made more economic sense to fly to
Sacramento, rent a car and then drive to Reno
(or South Lake Tahoe). I even found that renting
a car at the Sacramento airport was less expen-
sive than from the Reno airport. I didn’t shop
around much for rental cars as I’d found over
many trips that Costco Travel always seems to
offer the best prices on rental cars. Thus the
combination trip concept was born, where we
would fly to and from Sacramento, but stay three
nights there and three nights in South Lake Ta-
hoe. This allowed each of us to get what we
wanted, at a very low price.
March 2020
Once I’d booked our flights on the Southwest
web site and the car on the Costco Travel site,
it was time to make our hotel selections, as
well as decide which city we would stay in first.
Once again, the internet provided an easy way
to locate and price prospective hotels. This
process can be quick, but to get the best pric-
ing, many iterations and a fair amount of time
searching are necessary. My wife got to
choose where we stayed in South Lake Ta-
hoe, and for Sacramento, I looked to a hotel
chain we have used frequently, as I deter-
mined we could get one night free there
through redeeming our accumulated points.
Through web pricing comparisons, I found
both of our prospective hotels were less ex-
pensive for the first half of our trip
(Wednesday, Thursday and Friday nights) and
more expensive for the second half (Saturday,
Sunday and Monday nights). This was not too
surprising. What was a surprise was that the
Sacramento hotel was only about 20% more in
the second half of our trip, while for South
Lake Tahoe the price doubled. Thus the inter-
net showed it would save us money to stay in
South Lake Tahoe first, and then in Sacramen-
to for the last three nights (which is what I
thought would be best anyway). After looking
at the South Lake Tahoe hotel my wife liked
on a number of travel sites, I booked it on Ho-
tels.com, as it was as low there as anywhere
else, and I could earn hotel points on the site
for free future stays.
There were still pricing games to be played
with the Sacramento hotel. I had previously
checked the hotel chain’s web site to deter-
mine I had enough points for one free night
there, and it required the same number of
points regardless of the day of the week. For
the two nights I would be paying for, it did mat-
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